Tuesday, October 16, 2007

way back in 1993, a movie took malayalam movie industry and viewers by storm. a movie that redefined the theme of HORROR in Indian movies. when a couple decided to live in an ancient haunted house, everyone foresaw trouble. there might be spirits... ghosts... death sneaking at every corner... and what actually was happening???

superstar Mohanlal and gifted actress Shobhana acted as if competing with each other, and everyone else (except perhaps suresh gopi, who was not made for that role...) did their very best, to provide one of the best movies ever produced in malayalam.

over the last 14 years, it has been remade in every south Indian language and finally, this year, was remade in Hindi as a bollywood flick by Priyadarshan... and this humble movie-goer went to see that the day after release at New Theatre, Trivandrum. in there, i felt sorry for those who were being exposed to the plot for the first time, for, the director had done almost a scene by scene translation work and all of us mallus who were in the theatre had seen the original at least an UMPTEEN number of times and knew the sequence and the dialogs almost by heart. it was a comedy atmosphere, and the horror was not at all reflected. and i can't say the climax was well-taken either. but 'll have to say vidya balan has done well, and has emulated shobhana decently. now, don't, plz release statements sayin tht none of the actors had seen the original version- that wud b absurd.